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Please provide information around competitors to popular video messaging app, Marco Polo.
Hello and thank you for your request for information on the principal competitors to the video messaging app Marco Polo. Marco Polo has experienced a wave of popularity that seemed to catch even seasoned observers by surprise. Even as new competitors are starting to emerge, industry experts are still trying to get to know Marco Polo.
The short answer to your question is that Marco Polo has emerged as a direct competitor to Snapchat, which has grown to the point where it is competing with much larger platforms. There are different ways of defining Marco Polo's other primary competitors, and I have provided a detailed methodology of how I did so below.
I have entered my findings on three principal companies in the same space (Snapchat, Houseparty, Pingpong) on the attached spreadsheet, and there is additional information on other competitors in the attached source documents.
ABOUT MARCO POLO
Marco Polo is a free video chat app that allows users to message each other asynchronously: messages are sent and the receiver (the "Polo") is either able to respond immediately or at a later time. It's the second part of that process that makes Marco Polo unique. Messages sent through category leader Snapchat disappear after 10 seconds, so if the target is not available, the message is lost.
Although group chats are supported, Marco Polo's platform is presented as primarily a facilitator of one-to-one communication. And although there is no established rule regarding where Marco Polo is used, its fun filters for face and voice show that it targets personal rather than professional use.
So in order to find the most direct competitors, I looked for those who met the following criteria:
- primarily focused on video messaging (rather than text or multiple formats)
- free
- primarily focused on one-to-one communication
- intended for personal use rather than professional
METHODOLOGY FOR DETERMINING TOP COMPETITORS
My first step in answering your question was to determine which apps offered the most comparable services to Marco Polo. It is grouped with social networking apps generally, but it is part of the subcategory of communications apps. From there, I used a breakdown of communications apps from Apptopia in order to identify other apps that occupy the same niche. While there are hundreds of "best chat app" lists around the internet, I thought that Apptopia's approach- based on the number of downloads and engaged users over a several months- was both informative and objective.
The clear top competitor for Marco Polo is Snapchat, to which it is frequently (and often favourably) compared. However, Snapchat is now viewed as a competitor for much larger companies, whereas Marco Polo is still more comparable (in terms of user numbers and statistics, to smaller (in terms of reach and engagement) video messaging apps.
On the other side of the scale from Snapchat, there is Pingpong, which has a very similar approach as Marco Polo, but is even newer. (It launched in February 2017.) Pingpong is backed by Musical.ly, a Chinese company that claims to have 100 million users of its primary app, made up largely of teens and tweens. Pingpong is interesting as a competitor because it seems to fit within a suite of services from a developer that has already shown itself able to compete with larger players . This app has the advantage of access to an excited and very young customer base through its parent company.
Although its focus is more on group messaging than one to one, I chose Houseparty as a third competitor, because it has generated a great deal of media hype, because it comes from a developer that has previously launched an innovative and popular platform, and because it has proven exceptionally popular with the teenaged users who originally propelled Snapchat.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, Marco Polo is principally a competitor to Snapchat, but faces competition for young users from the teen-hit group app Houseparty and, most recently, the Musical.ly affiliated Pingpong.
I hope that this gives you all the information that you need to evaluate Marco Polo's place in the market. Thanks again for using Wonder and please let us know how we can be of further assistance.